Shirley Valentine

Malvern Theatres

Willy Russell’s portrayal of a woman
looking to escape the trap of empty domestic routines is as witty and
clever as ever.

In Shirley Valentine we see his similar
themes to those in Educating Rita: the blunt, raw humour and sarcasm of
such women are cutting, hilarious and at times quite sad.

Shirley (now Bradshaw since she married John
Bradshaw) has long lost the excitement of early romance with her
husband, her children have grown up and fled the nest, they no longer
need her.

She feels like a domestic slave for a husband who
demands his food on the table the moment he returns from work.
Meaningful conversation is no longer a satisfying part of their
relationship, so the opportunity to escape to Greece for a three week
holiday with her friend Jane becomes a huge and eventually irresistible
temptation.

Having once thus dared to flout convention and
escape the shackles of her domestic duties, she feels a fresh
exhilaration and potential that she wants to experience to the full and
believes the same could potentially liberate her husband if he likewise
had the courage to kick over the traces.

The script is full of witty, raw, Liverpudlian
humour and innuendo: society was liberalising and exploring free love,
beginning to despise marriage, social duty and the repression of women.

Unlike the film produced back in the eighties,
the stage production has just one actor, the protagonist herself, which
heightens the sense of her alienation and isolation. She talks to the
wall or the rock, bares her soul to the audience but has no human
interaction on stage.

She becomes both the dreamer and the rebel who
fearfully but courageously breaks out for ‘freedom’.

The demands on a performer to hold the audience
for the whole evening on her own are considerable and Jodie Prenger does
a brilliant job in that respect. She has a great presence on stage, her
voice has tremendous variety. Although the accent varies a little, her
vocal range and versatility with taking off different accents is
impressive. She has an ability to use pauses and subtle facial
expressions to achieve excellent comic impact.

The design of the show is strong. The first act
is the domestic kitchen – rather too smart a middle class one, I
thought. Jodie Prenger’s ability to prepare and cook egg and chips while
delivering her lines was well supported by the sound effects and the
smell of the frying chips reaching our nostrils in the auditorium.

The set in Act Two worked particularly well as we
lose the confines of the kitchen very successfully for a sense of space,
sunshine and water. Again the sound effects were well utilised, and the
story-telling was effective and very humorous.

Some of the themes in the play have lost a bit of
relevance, but under the humour there remain some serious and universal
issues: the nature of happiness and fulfilment, the meaning of
relationships, marriage and family, the issues surrounding gender and
social roles, the human capacity to dream and pursue life.

Willy Russell’s ability to raise such issues and
indeed to make some points in so doing while remaining hugely
entertaining are his brilliant gift. The audience were delighted. The
show runs in Malvern till Saturday 29th July.